*Editor’s Note* – The following article from “The Outdoorsman” Bulletin Number 60, June-November 2015, is republished here with permission. Please respect the copyright of this work. If you would like to ensure that The Outdoors remains in circulation, please donate to the cause. It is extremely worthwhile. Please click on The Outdoorsman “Subscribe” button to the right of this screen. Thank you.

Dr. Charles Kay: “Isle Royale Conditions Are Not Applicable Any Place Else in North America”

By George Dovel

In 2009, following an ongoing 2008 celebration of 50 consecutive years of wolf-moose research on Isle Royale, Research Leader Rolf Peterson warned that the island’s record low estimate of 500 moose could not provide enough sustained food for the 24 wolves they had counted. He predicted the wolf population could become extinct.

His prediction was based on basic facts from his research, which began as a graduate student in 1970 when there were 1,045 moose to feed only 18 wolves. That was nearly twice as many moose as the 30-moose-per-wolf that researchers had learned were required to feed them on a sustained basis.

But as inevitably happens when there is abundant prey and a healthy wolf population, the wolves rapidly expanded at a rate which far exceeded the reproductive rate of the moose. However that was not the only factor causing a rapid decline in the moose-to-wolf-ratio.

During Several Severe Winters, Deep Snow Trapped the Prey Species – Allowing the Wolves to Kill up to 3X the Prey They Killed during Normal Winters

In a 1985 article titled, “How Delicate is the Balance of Nature?” *, L. David Mech described how two decades of studying wolves in Michigan’s Isle Royale and in Northern Minnesota had taught him that a so-called “balance of nature” never lasts long. Instead, he learned that ratios of wolves and prey animals eventually fluctuate wildly – and sometimes catastrophically.(*see Jan-Feb 1985 National Wildlife or May 1985 Alaska Magazine)

Several severe winters with abnormal snow depths in the Lake Superior area allowed Minnesota deer and the Isle Royale moose to be killed easily by wolves. Killing sprees resulted in up to three times as many deer or moose being killed as in a normal winter – with little or nothing eaten from some of the carcasses the researchers examined.

By 1980 the Isle Royale wolf population had increased to 50 wolves in five packs – with only 788 live moose left to feed them. That <16 moose-per-wolf was the lowest ratio ever recorded on Isle Royale at that time, and the starving wolves began invading neighboring packs’ territories and killing each other in their search for food.

Regardless of any other contributing factors, it was obvious from the records both Peterson and Mech kept, that the wolves’ excessive killing depleted their primary prey species causing the 1980-82 crash in wolf numbers in both locations. The graph below shows that crash in Isle Royale, and the failure of inbred wolves to recover after the starving moose herd crashed 18 years later in 1998 Isle Royale Wolf-Moose Populations 1959-2015.

Isle Royale Wolf-Moose Populations 1959-2015

In 1988, 30 years after Mech’s Isle Royale wolfmoose research began, the agencies and groups involved finally decided to capture, radio collar, and take blood samples from Isle Royale wolves for three years. The object was to determine whether food shortage, disease, or genetic loss was causing the wolves to decline.

Although they found Parvovirus antibodies present in only two wolves only during the first year of testing in 1988, it did not prove the disease was active in the 1980-82 wolf population crash – or whether the wolves encountered it and other diseases after the crash as a result of their mass starvation from lack of prey.

However several members of the Study Support Group immediately began to claim the 1980-82 crash was caused by one or more hypothetical tourists who brought an infected dog to the island. But all five of the principal researchers, published a research paper in the August 1998 Journal of Mammology (18 years after the crash) attributing the 1980-82 wolf crash to the obvious shortage of prey – with parvovirus as a probable contributing factor.

The Corruption of Science

When wildlife biology professors emphasize to their students both the glory and the financial benefits of announcing an exciting new discovery, an increasing number fail to warn them of their responsibility to consider all of the facts they encounter. Sadly, instead of enriching our knowledge and our understanding of the natural world we live in with what is often a slow painstaking process of unbiased investigation, charlatans who pretend to be motivated by science often ignore that part of the process.

When Dr. Val Geist forwarded a May 14, 2013 erroneous article claiming the Isle Royale study area was a “Pristine Wilderness” to Dr. Charles Kay, Dr. Kay’s reply addressed the gross misrepresentations that have been a part of the world famous wolf-moose study since it began.

He pointed out that the entire island had been privately owned – with mining, logging and commercial fish camps. The original Native owners/administrators of the island had been replaced by various commercial interests, yet retained a senior right to hunt, fish and gather.

Dr. Kay explained that the state of Michigan had acquired most of the land and donated it to the National Park Service in order to create a national park and provide more income from tourists. Yet, like the Indians before them, a few of the white settlers retained use of their property, buildings, and even commercial fishing rights.

But once the National Park was created followed by Wilderness designation for the ~400 island land area, the Park Service prohibited all forms of travel on the land areas except hiking, canoeing and kayaking. Instead of providing increased income to Michigan from park visitors as was planned, Congress soon cut the NPS staff funding.

Dr. Kay had previously pointed out that importing uncontrolled moose to Isle Royale, where the largest predators were coyote and lynx, had resulted in wholesale destruction of critical browse for moose and other species. This caused the moose population to crash and made the survivors susceptible to deformities and disease.

And wolves also had very infrequent access to the island – an assurance of their ongoing debilitation and eventual self-destruction through inbreeding. Dr. Kay’s final comments to Dr. Geist express his frustration:

“The entire study has been a waste of time because it is a unique situation and the results are not applicable any place else in North America…and anyone who says it is applicable to other areas is committing scientific fraud. I was going to write an article on all this, but the publisher has had second thoughts. – Charles”

Why True Facts about Isle Royale Are So Important

Back in 1937 as part of his doctoral program, graduate student Durward Allen conducted a two-year study of skunks living on a poultry farm and bird sanctuary owned by Michigan State College. He concluded that skunks that were killing chickens should not be controlled, and he opposed controlling predators or re-stocking prey to restore depleted game populations for the rest of his life.

He was also a lifelong advocate of reducing human populations and creating new restricted “Wilderness” Areas to protect wolves and other large carnivores from human activities. In 1954, when he couldn’t get grant funding as a US Fish and Wildlife Service researcher to study the newly arrived wolves’ impact on moose on Isle Royale, he resigned as Assistant Chief of Wildlife Research for FWS to join the faculty at Purdue University.

By 1958, he had obtained funding from National Geographic and the National Science Foundation for a 10- year study. He coached PhD candidate L. David Mech, who began the study during a 3-year-period when both wolf and moose numbers appeared to be stable – with each increasing slightly.

But instead of directing Mech to continue the study for the full 10-year-period – when he would have seen the moose population begin to crash while the number of wolves skyrocketed – Allen was determined to jam his predator preservationist philosophy down the public’s throat during the first three years, and again two years later.

His actions resulted in Maurice Hornocker doing exactly the same thing with mountain lions and deer from 1964-67 – except the mule deer population in his Central Idaho study area was already nose-diving. Instead of using the Idaho Fish and Game deer counts, he substituted highly exaggerated figures to claim the lions were incapable of limiting deer numbers after only three winters of research.

Farley Mowat’s 1963 “Never Cry Wolf” fiction published as fact, claimed wolves were misunderstood mouse eaters. It paved the way for widespread propaganda campaigns by federal agency employees and intellectuals promoting the continuing Isle Royale study as being vital to understand all predator-prey management elsewhere.

The May 14, 2013 article titled, “Wolves Teach Scientists Their Limitations,” that Dr. Kay received from Dr. Geist, shows the far-reaching scope of that propaganda. It was published in the Washington, D.C.-based The Chronicle of Higher Education, which claims to be the number one source of news, information and jobs for college and university faculty members and administrators.

The weekly Chronicle newspaper has more than 64,000 academic subscribers with more than 315,000 total readers, and the daily website reports more than 1.6 million unique visitors each month. The article by Science Editor Paul Voosen perpetuated the myth that prolonging the 57- year-old study is the only way mainland Minnesota moose managers can find out why their moose herds are declining.

For example, Voosen’s article said the Northeast Minnesota moose population had plummeted by two-thirds during the previous three years while quoting Isle Royale Co-Project Leader John Vucetich as saying the nearby Isle Royale moose population had increased by 80% over roughly the same period. Yet Vucetich admitted that genetic repression of Isle Royale wolves from inbreeding “might” be “part of” the reason for the Moose increase.

In his 2013 article Voosen also claimed the Isle Royale researchers only “recently” discovered the spinal deformities* caused by inbreeding that makes walking or running painful for the wolves. Yet in an April 7, 2009 Scientific American article, Vucetich said researchers had been examining wolf carcasses for 50 years, and back in the 1960s about one-fourth had the spinal deformity. And in 2013 he wrote: “we haven’t found a wolf with a normal spine for the past 15 years.” (*see photos below)

Upper left photo shows a cranial view of normal C7 vertebra on spinal column, while upper right shows C7 vertebra of Isle Royale wolf #3529, with part of it resembling a C6 vertebra (arrow). Unlike normal C7, this painful deformity, called “LSTV,” is a result of inbreeding which impairs movement of the tail and hindquarters.

The bottom photo shows a ventral view of LSTV in wolf #3387. The red line (“gray” if you’re viewing this in black & white) drawn between S1 and S2, illustrates the painful malformation that pinches nerves and affects normal movements.

But this and several other spinal deformities are not the only major impacts from continued inbreeding of the stranded wolves on Isle Royale. Others include greatly increased vulnerability to disease pathogens such as Parvovirus and Lyme Disease, and increasing loss of the ability to breed and produce an adequate supply of healthy surviving replacements.

New Wolf Introduced New Genes to Inbred Wolves

In February of 1998, Isle Royale researchers noticed a different and larger “Alpha Male” leading the Middle Pack which resulted in increasing that pack size to 10 in 1999. That pack also forced another pack out of existence that year and vigorously protected its territory.

While on a surveillance flight in 1999, the pilot and researcher saw the new Alpha male defecating as his pack crossed a frozen lake. When the pack moved on, the pilot landed and they collected the scat (droppings), labeling it from the Alpha Male designated as #93.

The Alpha male began breeding a daughter, #58, in 2002, and other sons and daughters began forming packs and producing young with each other. The brief genetic advantage was soon reversed because, by 2002, five of the six breeding pairs on Isle Royale were either from wolf #93 and his daughter, or his other offspring.

Wolf #93 died in 2006 after eight years as the “Alpha Male” of the Middle Pack, siring 34 offspring, including 21 with his daughter #58. Following #93’s death she began breeding with one of her sons, #152.

Several years after #93’s death, his scat collected in 1999 was finally tested and he was not from Isle Royale.

Large almost white Wolf #93 center, led Middle Pack for eight years, sired 21 offspring with daughter #58 at left side of photo

Several years after #93 died, researchers admitted his offspring were breeding each other because inbreeding had caused the existing Isle Royale wolves to be in such poor condition they were almost incapable of reproducing. Yet the new batch of inbreeding soon destroyed the ability of #93’s offspring to produce their own healthy offspring.

The following is a photo of a severely deformed C7 vertebra in a five-year-old female wolf that was viciously attacked by two pack members several times, and finally escaped via an ice bridge to the Minnesota mainland in February of 2014. It illustrates the return of severe inbreeding and LSTV by Wolf #93 and his offspring.

This wolf was reportedly shot numerous times with an air rifle and one of the pellets entered its lungs between two ribs causing internal bleeding and death. This occurred on private land owned by the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, who delivered the carcass to the Park Service. The necropsy (autopsy) that discovered the fatal pellet by X-ray and recorded the spinal malformations, was performed jointly by the Colorado State Veterinary Diagnostic Lab and the Park Service Chief Veterinarian.

Photo of abnormal damage to young female wolf’s teeth was part of necropsy report.

In a 6-page research report published in Biological Conservation 142 (2009), and titled, “Congenital bone deformities and the inbred wolves (Canis lupus) of Isle Royale,” Swedish canine anatomy expert Jannikke Räikkönen published the analyses of 36 wolf skeletons collected by Isle Royale researchers from 1964-2007.

Except for skeletons collected in 2006-7, portions of the tail end were missing in many of the spinal columns. Yet she found sufficient evidence of spinal abnormality resulting from inbreeding in the Isle Royale skeletons to conclude that the number of wolves affected had grown progressively worse with each generation.

During the 15 years from 1964 through 1978, only one skeleton out of seven (14%) had malformed spines;

During the 19 years from 1980 through 1998, 13 skeletons out of 17 (76%) had malformed spines;

During the five years from 2003 through 2007, 11 skeletons out of 12 (92%) had malformed spines.

In the 6-1/2 years since the Räikkönen et al study results were published, Isle Royale researchers report that 100% of the spines they located have been malformed. Also, one of only three remaining live wolves observed from a distance this past winter was obviously malformed.

Räikkönen conducted her study with assistance from: (a) Rolf Peterson who had been studying Isle Royale wolves as a student in 1970, and was put in charge when Durward Allen retired in 1975; (b) Ecologist John Vucetich who joined the project 20 years later; and (c) Environmental Philosopher Michael Nelson who has been the official Philosopher and Historian for the Isle Royale wolf and moose project since 2005.

Ms Räikkönen addressed the lame excuses her coresearchers used to claim Isle Royale wolf spinal columns did not contain abnormalities caused by inbreeding. Yet she accepted their version of events at Isle Royale, and even altered her report with Vucetich’s suggested changes.

For example, the researchers’ report published in 1998 – 18 years after the 1980 Isle Royale wolf population crash – repeated their initial conclusion that food (prey) shortage was the primary cause of the crash. Yet in 2004, those same researchers began pretending that canine parvovirus – theoretically introduced by one or more undocumented tourists who illegally brought their infected dog(s) with them – was the sole cause of the 1980 crash.

The fact that Isle Royale wolf researchers spent nearly half a century collecting, cleaning and cataloging wolf skeletons, yet claimed they saw no evidence of spine malformations resulting from inbreeding, should have raised serious questions about their real agenda. Unless you believe we should not be allowed to harvest the renewable natural resources we own, and whose management we pay for, you share a responsibility to expose their real agenda.

The environmental extremists who claim to be documenting the wolf-moose relationship on Isle Royale are instead addicted to the destructive agenda promoted by Durward Allen (i.e. that protecting wolves is always necessary and beneficial to moose populations regardless of density or ratio to their prey).

In 2006, Peterson and Vucetich joined two environmental professors from Pennsylvania publishing a “Study Paper” solely blaming “human induced Parvovirus in 1980 or 1981” for the 1980 Isle Royale wolf crash. Because the Parvovirus already existed in wolves and dogs on the surrounding mainland in both the U.S. and Canada, and they still do not have factual evidence when or how it got to Isle Royale, in 1996 they were still claiming visitors had transported it to Isle Royale on their boots*. (* see “Science Times” in the March 19, 1996 New York Times.)

Their 2006 7-page Study Paper published in Ecology Letters claimed the few remaining Isle Royale wolves were still valuable by reducing the impact of global warming on the moose, and by reducing the impact of the moose on their forage. But like the other Isle Royale study predictions, the next few years proved the researchers’ new predictions were just as inaccurate as others had been.

From 2006 – 2015 the wolf population nose-dived from 30 wolves to only three, allowing the moose population to increase from 450 to 1,250. Despite two severe back-to-back winters out of the last four, the four year moose increase averaged 22% per year – more than double any other annual increase since wolves first began killing moose on the Island more than 60 years ago.

The 3 Remaining Wolves Are No Longer Impacting Moose, Which Will Severely Damage the Forage Again

Wolves are no longer making a measurable impact on Isle Royale moose. If the 22% annual moose increase exists for the next three years, moose numbers will nearly double causing severe damage to the forage. Before wolves arrived, uncontrolled moose caused extreme forage damage and crashed from 3,000 to 500 in 1934 (Adolph Murie).

Both researchers and residents reported sighting a significant number of moose on the Island after the 1912- 1913 winter. At that time it was speculated that the moose had crossed from the Canadian mainland on an ice bridge but an employee of a private railroad was interviewed and said his boss had paid him to capture the moose, build shipping containers and ship them by railroad and then boat to Isle Royale to provide moose hunting.

That employee’s statements were being considered by National Park Service officials when Outdoorsman No. 59 was mailed, but have since disappeared from the record. In order to determine whether moose appearance was a socalled “naturally occurring event,” which they support, or “human caused,” which they oppose, it is also necessary to understand the confusing rules for designating a National Park and for creating a quasi Wilderness.

Those rules are further complicated by the fact that Congress and the National Park Service approved the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park, but the NPS remains undecided about whether or not to reintroduce wolves into Isle Royale National Park.

The major difference is that Isle Royale is an island surrounded by several hundred tiny islands, with the closest mainland 15 to 40 or more miles away. The single large predator – the wolf – normally has no escape from the island, and no alternate large prey besides the moose. The wolves multiply much faster than the moose, which finally forced the moose into a “predator pit.”

A Remote Island is a Poor Place to Raise Wolves

When the ratio of moose to wolves fell below about 30:1, there were no longer enough moose to provide sustained nourishment. With no place to go, the starving wolves began to invade each others’ territory searching for food – resulting in wolves killing and eating other wolves.

As mentioned previously, being malnourished also caused the inbred wolves to be more susceptible to disease pathogens, and less likely to breed and produce healthy offspring. The injection of new genes from Wolf No. 93 in 1998 resulted in only a very temporary reduction in the percentage of inbred wolves on Isle Royale.

Also, moose calves that are born following a severe winter weigh less and mature to produce calves that also weigh less and are considered substandard. Skeletons of these young moose exhibit premature crippling arthritis when they are only five years old, making them much easier prey for the inbred diseased wolves.

Isle Royale Biologists Ignore Other Wolf Research

In 1960, Alaska wildlife biologists transplanted two pairs of wolves onto SE Alaska’s Coronation Island in an experiment designed to reduce forage damage by blacktailed deer. During the following summer, a commercial fisherman shot both of the adult female wolves but biologists then discovered wolf tracks made by pups mixed with the two sets of adult male wolf tracks.

Articles in Outdoorsman No. 35 by an Alaska science editor explained how these wolves had three litters over several years, and how 11 or more wolves had finally killed all but three of the formerly abundant deer that had ultimately taken refuge on a steep brushy cliff at the other end of the island.

Dr. Val Geist had shared an office with the research project leader and he confirmed how the wolves killed seals, and finally killed and ate each other after the seals stopped hauling out on the beach. The last remaining wolf starved and Alaska biologists learned not to introduce wolves to an island where there is no opportunity to leave once the wolves decimate their sole source of large prey.

Denali National Park Wolf History Also Ignored

But Isle Royale biologists ignored that as well as the long term Denali National Park research by David Mech and or Layne Adams et al, when protected wolves drove once abundant caribou, moose and Dall sheep populations into a “predator pit”. Despite the establishment of buffer zones* outside of the Park to protect wolves that strayed outside of the park boundary seeking food, 60% of Denali wolves that die each year are killed and eaten in the Park by other hungry wolves defending their territory. (* Buffer zones were established outside the NE boundary of Denali Park but were discontinued by the Board of Game in 2010, not to be reconsidered until 2016.)

Snared Wolf Prompts Petition to Restore Buffer Zones

In 2012, long time Alaska big game guide and trapper Coke Wallace caught one of two breeding females from the Grant Creek wolf pack in a snare outside of the Park. The pack’s other breeding female was found dead from “natural” causes near its den site in the Park that same spring and the two deaths plus the remaining wolf pack moving their new den away from the road in 2013, resulted in a further decline in wolf viewing success from a record high of 44% in 2010 to only 4% in 2013.

After the Park’s name was changed to Denali and its size tripled in 1980, officials recognized the danger to tourists from getting out of their vehicles to get a closer look at wolves that weren’t afraid of humans. They used bus tours for viewing wolves to better control the tourists.

That, plus the negligible impact of hunters and trappers killing a maximum of only one or two Park wolves compared to the much larger number that die from cannibalism and other “natural” causes, were two major reasons given for eliminating the buffer zones by 2010.

Trapper Wallace reported that the female wolf he snared in 2012 was severely malnourished with hip bones and backbone protruding, but a Park Biologist disagreed. However, long time wolf advocate/biologist and former ADFG Game Board member Vic Van Ballenberghe publicly agreed with the trapper’s assessment.

He said the Denali wolves all looked very thin in 2012 and all three big game species they depended on to survive were very low compared to past numbers. Park biologists estimated the total number of wolves in the six million acre Park had declined from 143 in 2007 to only 70 in 2012, and now, three years later, to only 48 in 2015.

The excuses Denali Park biologists used to try to justify their hands-off “natural (ecosystem) management” instead of maintaining a healthy ratio of predators to their prey, produced the same results they have in Yellowstone, Banff, Jasper, Wood Buffalo, Isle Royale, Vancouver Island, and every other place where protected wolves are allowed to exceed a healthy ratio to their prey.

In Mark Hebblewhite’s ten-year study of the impact of returning wolves to the Banff ecosystem in the 1980s, he recorded an annual decline of 8% of moose and a 90% drop in elk numbers – with several woodland caribou herds becoming extinct. But instead of restoring healthy wildlife management in national and provincial parks, Professor Hebblewhite and his fellow extremists insist game managers must allow predators to drive the prey species into predator pits outside of the parks as well (see Outdoorsman No. 38).

Otherwise, he says, there will be more wildlife on the outside than in the parks, and this would discourage visitors from spending money for a remote chance to view a handful of semi-tame “Watchable” wolves in the Parks. That is exactly what has happened in Denali Park.

Why Not Manage for Healthy Wildlife in the Parks?

Even with only 48 wolves in 6 million acres of Park, there are still not enough large prey animals left to feed them year-around on a sustained basis. Yet in the 4.2 million acres of adjacent Game Management Unit 20A that is open to hunting, there are about 300 healthy wolves and 10,000 healthy moose.

In a guest editorial in the 03-29-2015 Alaska Dispatch News, retired forester, biologist and former Game Board member Pete Buist pointed out that the 10,000 moose in Unit 20A provide a human harvest of several hundred moose every year in addition to the estimated 2,000 moose per year that are killed by the 300 wolves.

His editorial explained why the Board of Game’s recent rejection of a petition by primarily outside interests to restore buffer zones to protect Park wolves outside of the Park, was both legal and logical. He also explained why the petition was simply an anti-hunting anti-trapping fund raiser for an extremist group rather than a sincere effort to increase the number of wolves in the Park by restoring a healthy balance of wolves with their prey.

He compared the declining prey and the starving wolves in the Federal Park with the abundant healthy wolves and the human harvest of thousands of pounds of healthy wild game meat by the State in GMU 20A. Then he asked why, if the petitioners wanted more wolves in the Park, they didn’t simply encourage the same healthy management in the Park as existed in 20A.

In 2008, the Isle Royale research/propaganda team consisting of Michael Nelson, Rolf Peterson and John Vucetich published “The Isle Royale Wolf-Moose Project: Fifty Years of Challenge and Insight” revealing years of underhanded activities in the George Wright Forum*. In 2011, a second version titled: “The Isle Royale Wolf– Moose Project (1958-present) and the Wonder of LongTerm Ecological Research” can still be found at: http:// www.isleroyalewolf.org/sites/default/files/tech_pubs_files/ Nelson2011ISRO.pdf as this issue is being printed.

Both versions contain harsh criticisms and namecalling of people who control wolves, as well as the claim they also slowly torture the wolves as part of the price for their evil existence. The 4-yr.-old report also documents the researchers’ brazen refusal to quit the study and leave Isle Royale three times when ordered to by two different Inrterior Secretaries and by their FWS boss.

Then a 2012 article by Rolf Peterson published in Moral Ground titled, “Will There Be Wolves in Paradise?” stated the following “On the Fourth of July in 1981, a dog brought illegally to Isle Royale by a visitor on a private boat carried a new mutant virus—canine parvovirus—to the island. The wolf population was devastated, and most wolves died.”

His comments falsely implied that a human and his dog brought parvovirus to the island and caused the radical 1980-82 wolf decline. Yet of the 36 wolves that died during the two-year crash 20 were recorded several months before the alleged July 1981 trip to the Island with a dog.

The truth is that all of the Isle Royale National Park Svc. Wolf research leaders from Robert Linn in 1956- 1957, Durward Allen in 1958-1975, Rolf Peterson in 1975- 2001 and John Vucetich from 2001 to the present, have tried to convince the public that humans – not wolves – have caused both the moose declines and the wolf declines.

But remember David Mech’s 1985 article cited on Page 1 of this article in which he referenced the Isle Royale wolves doubling to 50 by 1980 while the stunted yearling and two-year-old moose were totally vulnerable to excessive killing by wolves during the series of extreme winters. Mech continued, “Then the population of Isle Royale wolves crashed as expected.”

What Did They Expect?

The fact that the malnourished wolves were killing each other or starving to death once they destroyed too many moose during the series of extreme winters was never questioned by the researchers until after Vucetich and Nelson joined the group and increased its “blame civilized humans” agenda.

During the past few months I have read several dozen pages of their publicized efforts promoting green energy and denouncing bona fide wildlife experts, including Val Geist for his support of hunting and the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. They propose to change the “North American Model” so that it has no connection with hunting.

The Organization they formed, “The Conservation Ethics Group,” is actively seeking to convert our energy source to solar panels while outlawing fracking, exploration, development and use of fossil fuels, and promoting their radical vision of Conservation Ethics and Sustainability Ethics.